Sister Corita Kent
Corita Kent serigraphs: words of prayer (1968), handle with care (1964), mary does laugh (1964), that they may have life (1964) ©2021 Estate of Corita Kent / Immaculate Heart Community / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
FOR SISTER MARY CORITA, the supermarket parking lot in Hollywood she walked through each day to get to her art studio was filled with “sources.” Grocery advertisements, power lines, cracks in the asphalt, songs from car radios—all of these, to her, were “points of departure” that, when examined in a new way, tell us something about ourselves and God. “There is no line where art stops and life begins,” she wrote.
Corita Kent, a Catholic sister described by Artnet as “the pop art nun who combined Warhol with social justice,” delighted in Los Angeles’ chaotic 1960s cityscape. Her serigraphs (silk-screen prints) wrestle with injustice, racism, poverty, war, God, peace, and love in bursting neon and fluorescent lettering, transforming popular advertisements and songs into statements of hope.
“To create is to relate,” Kent wrote in Footnotes and Headlines. “We trust in the artist in everybody. It seems that perhaps there is nothing unholy, nothing unrelated.”
“She broke barriers her whole life, but always with joy,” Nellie Scott, director of the Corita Art Center, told Sojourners. “People often call her the joyous revolutionary.”
Kent was born in Iowa in 1918 and raised in a large Catholic family. Her family moved to Hollywood when she was young, and at age 18, Kent joined the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, who ran the high school she attended. She went on to teach art at Immaculate Heart College, becoming head of the art department in 1964.
The changes going on in both the art world and Catholicism excited and inspired Kent. In 1962, the year that Pope John XXIII convened Vatican II, Kent saw the first exhibit of Andy Warhol’s “Campbell’s Soup Cans” paintings and dove into the world of pop art. “New ideas are bursting all around and all this comes into you and is changed by you,” she wrote in Learning by Heart.
102 years after her birth, artists and activists are still learning from the vision of Corita Kent.
Sister Corita Kent's most famous work is her iconic rainbow-colored "Love" stamp. Photo by Boris15/Shutterstock
IN MY FIRST week of design school, I found myself riding Austin’s notoriously limited public transit system, asking fellow riders why they used it, what would encourage them to ride more often, and what they would change about the service.
After a handful of interviews, my rides yielded an unexpected insight: Users didn’t like Capital Metro’s expanded hours and new bus routes. The changes, implemented in June, were ostensibly for the riders’ benefit. But people’s routine included a strong aversion to change. And for a population already dealing with a rapid rate of change in their city, the new routes were especially disorienting.
Any externally forced change can represent an existential threat—as we know all too well from our daily news cycles. Even something as small as the sudden restructuring of our—or our kids’—commute can throw our perceptions of relational, financial, or political safety into jeopardy.
We’re in a wearying time. And looking at CapMetro users’ responses, I began to wonder whether we can build levity into a daily commute as a form of comfort blanket for these users. How can we offer delight as an antidote to people who are really, really weary of change?
Sister Corita Kent. Image via www.corita.org.
Bright bold text danced across expansive white-framed serigraphs lining our college student center. The first moment I set foot on my college campus, Westmont College in Santa Barbara, Calif., the artwork of Sister Mary Corita Kent captured my heart and imagination.
One playful print, about the bread of life, features the signature bold red yellow and blue Wonder Bread wrapper.
Another featured Beatles lyrics: “I get by with a little help from my friends.”
One, playing on the name of the West Coast grocery chain “SafeWay,” points to the One who called himself “the Way.”
Another — the commentary of one Roman Catholic upon another?— employed Scripture to reference JFK: “There was a man sent from God whose name was John.”
Yet another, in patriotic red, white and blue, features the words of Camus, “I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.”
At 18, not yet knowing myself to be called as a bearer of color and words and truth, my voice was unleashed by the prophetic artwork of Sister Corita.
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